While it's easy to get excited about your own marketing, sometimes you have to open your eyes and just admit that your baby is ugly. So that's exactly what we're doing. A few years ago a promotional video was created for VisionWeb, and at that time it snuck through the cracks of being good enough to make public. But looking back on it now, we realize this video never should have been used in our marketing mix as part of our library of optical resources. Luckily we have thick skin and understand the importance of being able to critique our own work, and realize when something it just plain bad.

Are there any processes or marketing tactics your office is participating in that just don't make sense? Take a minute and think about things you or your staff might be doing that just don't fit with the way you work, or your brand. Don't be afraid to admit that you've been doing something wrong, there's always time to change it! Trust us, and take a look at our bad promotional video for yourself:

Optical Resources: 7 Ways We Failed at Creating a Good Promotional Video

Too Much Jargon

The whole point of creating a video to promote your products or services is to easily explain the features and benefits and how the service will benefit the viewers. So why would you use complicated jargon that viewers won't understand? Make sure you're talking like a human and not using language that is hard to follow.

Bad Use of Stock Photos

The use of stock photos in this video shows generic photos of happy doctors and office workers. When possible, it's better to use your own, real photos. Even better yet is if they represent real users of your products and services. The photos with this video look very out of place and don't work well with the other background images and effects resulting in a misrepresentation of the brand.

Inconsistent Branding

There are a lot of things wrong with the overall branding in this video, but most importantly is the use of the VisionWeb URL. In the video it's written in uppercase letters, and in our brand guidelines when written in that format should always be lowercase. It's important to make sure that all of your branding elements including logo, typeface, and colors are consistent across all platforms.

Distracting Effects

The background effects in this video are very distracting. There are a lot of floating graphics and images that distract from the message and product shots in the video. It also makes the video look very dated, as if it was made in the 90's. Unfortunately, the video was made in 2010. When making a promotional video you don't want viewers to be distracted from the main messaging.

Bad Ending

For whatever reason, this video gets cut off at the end, in the middle of a sentence, without proper closure. The viewer doesn't get any next steps for finding more information. On top of that, being cut off at the end comes off unprofessional and amateur as if the video wasn't edited, or the time wasn't taken to make a proper ending.

Irrelevent Product Shots

The product shots in the video do no support the commentary or help prove the ease of use of the software. If product shots are going to be used within a video they should be easy to read and correspond with what the video is explaining at that point in the video. To just throw product shots in a video with no explanation provides no value to the viewer.

Overall Tone

The overall tone of this video looks very fake and produced, and comes off like a 90's infomercial or used car commercial. It's generic. It's dated. It's off brand. Nothing about the tone of this video is in line with VisionWeb's brand and its offerings.

If you're considering making a promotional video or commercial for your eyecare practice these are all points to take into consideration during the planning and editing process. All that being said, last year we created a promotional video for our cloud-based practice management and EHR software, Uprise. It's drastically different than our 2010 video, and we think it's a much better example of a good promotional video. Take a look!